Sunday, April 22, 2012

Earth Day always lurks on my calendar, ready to jump out
with a big “Boo! Did you save the Earth this year?”

It’s not like we could forget about it at my house: Earth
Day is my birthday. What’s more,
the day right before it is my daughter’s birthday, providing me ample
opportunity to offer up unwanted birthday party themes like “Clean Up the
Beach” or “Let’s Carpool to the Nearest Park for Organic, Wholegrain Cake and
Unwrapped, Recycled Gifts.” Poor
thing, she wouldn’t mind some plastic toys and shiny new wrapping paper once in
a while.

Being saddled with an eco-obsessed mother, now, that might actually be a bit of a real burden. Because I’m the type of mom who
finishes a sentence with the word “burden” and immediately starts thinking
about the concept of “body burden” and our toxic world, and how quickly we are
making it more toxic*, and then I start to feel guilty for how much I drive my
car and so I snap at the kids for letting the water run too long while they are
brushing their teeth.

Yes, I drive too
much, so they should remember to
turn off the water. What? It makes sense to me, um, sort of, in a
twisted kind of way.

Then I feel bad for being a grouchy mom, so I let them stay
up past bedtime for extra reading and cuddling, but then I feel ashamed for
having left so many of the lights on while I was doing aforementioned reading,
and then…well, it basically never ends.
How’s a bright-eyed five-year-old supposed to deal with so much maternal
neurosis?

Or, for that matter, so much cultural neurosis? It seems
like the consensus out there, by now, is pretty much “Let’s do it! Let’s save
the planet!”—and then we all go on with our over-consumption and “just this
once” justifications. I know I do,
even though I swear I try, fishing my bamboo spoon out of my purse at the ice
cream store that only offers plastic ones, signing email petitions daily,
organizing parties to spread the word about how insane we are for continuing
development of the Canadian Tar Sands.
Printing out infographics linking extreme weather to climate change and
bringing them to potlucks. People
see me coming and start to blurt out their latest green triumph. “I told my favorite restaurant to stop
using plastic to-go containers.”
“I explained to my neighbor how to use the recycle bin.” “I remembered my bags!”

We report these tiny successes to each other as a way of
warding off the demons of our larger failures. “I didn’t manage to get the Supreme Court to reverse the
Citizen’s United decision.” “I haven’t
been able to ban mountaintop removal coal mining.” “I didn’t even convince my city council that expanding inane
consumption by building even more big box stores is a bad idea.” But hey, we did carpool to work, right? Right? Doesn’t
that count?

Mostly, I don’t feel like it counts. The problems are so large, and I’m so
small. And it’s pretty darn easy
to turn all my worries about what kind of world my children will inherit into a
deep and real case of depression, so I toil away at not just retreating with
them under the covers, cuddling and reading into the night, electric use be
damned. It takes all my grown-up
discipline, but I’m working to remember that birthdays are not about what
you’ve done so far; birthdays are about blowing out the candles and wishing for
the future.

Cultural problems, like this climate mess we are in, require
cultural solutions, so I’m not going to be able to fix it all by myself. But if I look back over the past year,
I can find all sorts of good news reflected in those small self-reports of
righteousness: We are seeing, more and more, how many ways we could do
better. Our culture is actually
shifting—maybe not as quickly as I’d like, maybe not even as quickly as it
would have to for my kids to have a liveable planet—but change is happening.

So, when Earth Day interrogates me this year, I’ll just say,
“Look, I’m really doing my best here.
Whether it’s good enough doesn’t matter, because it really is my best,
and my best keeps getting better.”
Then I’ll blow out the candles, hoping.

* Read just about anything ever written by Sandra
Steingraber if you want a more scientific approach than my “Yikes, we’re all
poisoning ourselves!” panic.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Welcome to the April 2012 Carnival of Natural Parenting: Kids and Personal CareThis post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama. This month our participants have shared stories, tips, and struggles relating to their children's personal care choices.

I’m sure it drives my ex insane: during the four days that
the kids are with me each week, they are as likely to take a mud bath as they
are to take a shower. But hey,
since I’ve been the steward of my backyard mudpit for the last decade, I’m
pretty sure I know what’s in there (um, microbe-rich, pesticide-free mud). Which is more than I can say about most
soaps and shampoos. So who’s to
say what’s “cleaner” anyway.

Well, there are scientists who study this stuff, and they probably
could tell me, if I knew any of them.
Fortunately, lots of them work with and for Environmental Working Group,
and they keep these massive searchable databases about what’s in a vast range
of the products that line up on the edge of the tub. Their Skin Deep®
Cosmetics Database, which it would not immediately occur to me to search,
since as a letting-myself-go middle-aged earth-mama type, I don’t really think
of myself as using “cosmetics,” provides anyone with internet access with more
information than we ever wanted to have about soaps, shampoos, sunscreens, and
lots of other things we put on our kids.

The pervasiveness of not-entirely-safe ingredients in our
body-cleaning products begs the question of whether “healthy” and “clean”
correlate as closely as we like to think.
As a nurse, I do a heck of a lot of hand-washing, and I do honestly
believe in it as a way of preventing the spread of disease. I take quite seriously my
responsibility in not transferring germs from one patient to another. But as a mom, I let my kids spend a lot
of time in dirt, and don’t worry too much about how much of it gets in their
mouths. And although I believe in
handwashing, I’m completely and totally opposed to anti-bacterial soaps (for
all those of us who are lucky enough not have an immune-suppressed family
member). Plain soap with minimal
additives, plus water and friction, never ever contributed to the evolution of
a super-bug, as far as I know.

I was once told by a friend, quite earnestly, that I was
“not clean enough” to become a nurse.
And if you looked at my kids’ fingernails, you might well agree. As for me, I do occasionally cringe
when I notice those half-moons of black as they climb out of the car to go to
school. But then I relax,
remembering that they got that way out in our very own organic garden. So I just call it good clean dirt. Which is clean enough for me.

***Visit Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama to find out how you can participate in the next Carnival of Natural Parenting!
Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants:(This list will be live and updated by afternoon April 10 with all the carnival links.)

Rub-a-Dub Co-Bathing in Our Tub — Bath time is more than soap and water! That Mama Gretchen shares how co-bathing with her toddler has opened up a world of cleanliness, learning, and bonding.

How to Gently Trim Your Toddler's Nails — Shannon at The Artful Mama discusses some of the gentle suggestions she has received to help Little Man overcome his anxiety of having his nails trimmed, as well as how she copes with her need for his nails to be trimmed.

Confused About Chemicals? — Jaye Anne at Wide Awake, Half Asleep describes how to find out where the toxic chemicals are in your house and tips on alternatives.

Clipping Those Talons — ANonyMous at Radical Ramblings describes the ways her daughter's tolerance for personal care has changed over time, especially when it comes to nail clipping.

Sit Back, Relax and Unschool Hygiene — Instead of focusing on tactics of how to 'get' your child to focus on hygiene, Authentic Parenting explains how to help your child internalize hygienic standards.

EC: All or Nothing? — Elimination Communication. Even the title sounds complicated and time consuming. It doesn't have to, if you adapt it to meet your family's needs, says Jennifer at True Confessions of a Real Mommy.

Routine Battles — In a guest post at Anktangle, Jorje of Momma Jorje outlines a simple incentive to help inspire your little one to follow a routine.

Redefining Beauty For My Daughter — Justine at The Lone Home Ranger relays her struggle to define her own femininity and how her preschooler unexpectedly taught her a lesson in true beauty.

About Me

The lapse-prone, wanna-be eco-mom of three semi-feral children. You'll notice she has a more-than-slight tendency to over-hyphenate. Her book, A Million Tiny Things: one mother's desperate search for hope in a changing climate, will be out for Mother's Day 2012.